The Act Party has been “thoroughly” discredited and its ministerial positions should be removed, Labour leader Phil Goff says.

Now I have been critical, both on this blog and on radio, of Rodney’s decision not to force Garrett to make his offending known before the election. It was an error of judgement, and ACT have been damaged by it.

But I’m sorry, it is just too much to have Labour get sanctimonious on this, and declare that because of this, Rodney is unfit to be a Minister.

Need I remind people of Taito Philip Field – the MP found to have committed numerous corrupt practices while a Labour Minister and MP.

Field’s offending was not 26 years before he became an MP. It was while he was an MP. Field’s offending was not incidental to him being an MP – it was corruption in the course of his MP duties. And it was corruption aided by his Ministerial colleague who rubber stamped almost every immigration application made by Field.

And what happened when allegations were made. The Labour leadership defended Field. They said he was only guilty of working too hard.

And even after the full scale of his offending was made clear by the Ingram Report, the Labour leadership still defended him. If Rodney Hide is unfit to be a Minister, then Helen Clark and Michael Cullen were equally unfit to be Ministers.

Even worse, Labour never booted Field out for his criminal offending. He only got booted out when he talked of not standing for Labour.

And the final indignity came after he was found guilty of 11 charges of bribery and corruption (and 11 of perverting or obstructing the course of justice). Labour not only refused to apologise for the huge shame Field was, but they refused to even accept he was guilty. I’m not making this up – go check the records. The only comment they would make is they “acknowledge” the verdict.

So yes Rodney made a mistake, and yes ACT is damaged. But for fucks sake the last thing we need is a lecture in ethics from the party that gave protection and defence to a corrupt MP. If Labour ever get around to actually apologising for their defence of Field, then maybe they get to be taken seriously on ethical issues.

Related posts:

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 18th, 2010 at 1:53 pm and is filed under NZ Politics.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.

61 Responses to “Hypocritical ******”

I see too Chris Hipkins was making the same call…i pointed out that when Field was corruptly stealing from his constituents Chris Hipkins was sitting in Clarks office around the table constructing the defence of Field…the famous “nothing to see here, move along” and the “he is guilty of nothing more than being helpful” defence lines.

DPF, practically none of our politicians are interested in truth. Their only aim is to spin and manipulate to appeal to the uninformed – sadly a majority of the voters. Key and Smith did this with the ETS, and Goff is at it here. Reminds me of this quote:

“It doesn’t matter what is true,
it only matters what people believe is true.”
— Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace

Not forgetting the illegal election funding that required an act of parliament to make good albiet retrospectivly or the actions to protect the little fraud who called his movement the oxymoronic NZ First HaHa He. Is there not a stronger descriptive than Hypocrite

Yeah, Garret was guilty of that monumental offence against all of humanity, hypocrisy, and being exposed to a bunch of easily manipulated mindless baying jackals as a HYPOCRITE he has of course no place among the fine people of parliament, who are all as pure as driven snow, and especially no right to be battling to restore law and order to the streets of a country awash in violent and amoral crime.

To all those who cheered for Garret’s demise reflect well upon the fact that you probably destroyed ACT too and have helped the Progressives move the centre point of politics in NZ about 15 degrees to the left.

Pointing the accusatory finger does not absolve Hide from responsibility here. He is saying that he didn’t ask Garrett what he had been to court for, even though he had bothered to find out that Garrett had been to court. Really – who believes that? You would have to be as credulous as a young cult member to believe that. oh wait – this blog is over-run with young ACTivists…

NZ will be ever grateful to Garrett. Of all the pollies that have promised tougher sentencing for heinous crimes and recidivist individuals not one until Garret actually got the Law changed in a way that will made a difference.
Next time your wife/daughter/granddaughters get attacked or your home invaded by scum and you are distressed after being attacked someplace you can thank Garrett for allowing the judiciary to lock these scum up for good.

Garrett was a mistake all the way along, and that seems like Hide’s responsibility. I can sort of understand Hide thinking he had perkbusting covered, Douglas had economic matters covered and Garrett filled in the other major plank, law and order. Sure, Garrett was successful getting tougher sentence policies through, but apart from pandering to the throw-away-the-key minority it is not something that is going to solve the crime problem. Maybe Hide can next recruit a specialist on prevention and rehabilitation.

That wouldn’t have anything to do with the alienation and disenfranchisement that the poor feel? You want someone to behave as part of a community, you have to bring them in to the community. You can’t simply leave them on the margins hoping that they’ll cut all thier old social bonds and move into the middle class. Human beings, for the most part, simply don’t work like that. Let’s not live in the fantasy that economically and socially marginalising large portions of the population is going to be without its consequences. People resent feeling marginalised – it’s just part of human nature, and unfortunately that resentment can lead to all sorts of anti-social behaviour. It’s psychology 101 – yet most rightists fail to grasp this.

Yes and as gravedodger also says, it’s a very long list indeed re: the unethical legacy of the 5th Liarbore govt. Who could forget Winston and Owen, lying about Peter Doone to force him out of office, sending Mike Williams to Australia then letting him out to hang when caught by denying she even knew what he was doing, Electoral Finance Act, etc.

It’s a shame many in Liarbore don’t even seem to recognise these things as being in the least bit wrong. That’s to me the really appalling thing.

To all those who cheered for Garret’s demise reflect well upon the fact that you probably destroyed ACT too and have helped the Progressives move the centre point of politics in NZ about 15 degrees to the left.

ACT is responsible for the vast leftward shift of New Zealand politics. Since its formation, laissez faire politicians, policies, and activists have been ghettoed in a minor party which can be either easily attacked, or easily ignored. If ACT is destroyed, good policy may once again begin to make inroads into the major parties’ manifestos. At the moment, they use ACT as a guideline of what not to advocate.

Blair I don’t need to remind you there’s a huge difference between the validity or otherwise of what one advocates and the way one behaves.

I mean if you’re a moron then you’d conflate the two, wouldn’t you. Failing miserably to understand the basic difference between the truth or falsity of whether or not something’s a good idea and the fact that the person who discusses it has certain personal traits. I mean, where’s the connection, Blair?

September 18th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
NZ will be ever grateful to Garrett. Of all the pollies that have promised tougher sentencing for heinous crimes and recidivist individuals not one until Garret actually got the Law changed in a way that will made a difference.
Next time your wife/daughter/granddaughters get attacked or blah blah blah blah blah

If the law was as good as it was sold as being, there wouldn’t BE a next time. This was never about crime prevention, something ACT only thinks of in terms of “where do we bury the bodies”, it was about the vindictiveness of the self righteous.

This, of course, would be the same Labour Party which refused to vote to censure Winston Peters in 2008 despite overwhelming evidence that Peters has misled Parliament. The reason that Labour did not support the censure motion was that they needed NZ First’s votes to pass their ETS before the 48th Parliament was dissolved.

It’s a bit rich for Phil Goff to now try and rewrite history in an attempt to capture the moral high ground.

Sadly, your admonition loses some of its impact through use of an unnecessary expletive expression (FFS). You issue demerits to others for use of the same expletive (mainly restricted to its use in forms of personal abuse), as you are entitled to do on your own blog, but as blog owner you have a major influence on general standards of discourse here.

PG: “… apart from pandering to the throw-away-the-key minority …” That’s a cute throw-away line. Care to provide some hard evidence that the majority of NZers are against stronger sentences for serious repeat crimes?

It’s not difficult to get a majority to back a “get tougher on crime” bandwagon, of course most people want less crime. But locking more people up for longer doesn’t have a good record of achieving that – the sentences, imprisonment rates and prison populations have increased significantly over the last ten years, has crime decreased significantly?

Act’s approach was more of the same to appease to the simplistic reactionaries. It would take a lot more guts to address the complex causes and deal with them.

you cannot in all seriousness now be trying to defend Hide. He has been a disaster fort he act party this year. Concealing Garrets past offending from the party and the public is sacking material. Hide does not have one shred of credibility left after this episode. Clearly Heather Roy’s and Roger Douglas’ insticts are on the button. john Key ahs no option at present but to distance himself from Act.

Redbaiter’s assertion that those of you on this blog that have criticised Garrett have destroyed act. Cant agree with that, its simply shooting the messenger. Garrett with the able support of his party leader have destroyed act. Lets have a look at hides traack record this year as leader. The Perk Buster himself was busted for being knee deep in the public trough, follow that with the appalling handing of the Heather Roy issues and now Garrett. It then turns out Hide had knowledge of the Garrett debarcle before garrett came to parliament. What was he thinking. Goff for once is right here, Act has little credibility left here. Lavbour suffered from being a long term government, being a large party that was certainly going to make mistakes and it did. Act is small (tiny in fact) and there is no excuse for it being so ill disciplined. Hide has not been an effective leader and I suspect it is now too late to save the party from being routed at the next election. Lets hope national is gearing up to put a strong candidate in the Epsom seat.

Mark if you’re talking to me I’m not, really. I would be very sad indeed to see him go for there is no visible replacement for the ACT torch, which has been brilliant and which I hope continues to burn. That’s all.

Further to previous, I can’t understand what Rodney was thinking. I mean, put yourself in his place when he first finds out about Garrett’s “issue.”

He’s the party leader with all the responsibilities that entails. Nothing will happen and no-one will ever know if he makes the right call. If he makes the wrong call, the consequence now before us was entirely foreseeable, back then. So what does Rodney have to say.

He appears to be saying that he needed Garrett as a powerful politician (in ACT terms). Fair enough. You could see why he would think that. Were it not for this, he’s not bad. He’s not a lion or a bull elephant, sure, but in ACT terms, he’s not bad, were it not for this.

What appears to have happened, based in his admission that he never got around at the time to thinking about the family, is that he didn’t do what most of us in his position (with all the responsibility that entails) would have done. Which is of course, think very carefully through all the dynamics of this problem, before making his decision.

This episode hasn’t filled me full of confidence that Rodney is a deep thinker but I never really thought he was and I don’t rely on him to be that so to me this episode is not a cardinal sin, from a Rodney supporter perspective.

However, mate, I expect great things from you, to make up for this.

P.S. I think your using the fact he didn’t inform the court as an excuse to abandon someone you invited onboard in the first place even when he’d told you about this, and I think that’s pretty fucked, as well. It’s a transparent excuse, mate, we’re not all stupid.

I suggest people have a read back through blog posts in 2006, when the Field affair was developing. I have been reading back through it recently and, even though I was blogging it myself at the time, my jaw still dropped reading some of what Labour was throwing about at the time.

An example: most people would remember Clark labeling Brash as “cancerous and corrosive” but it’s usually forgotten that Helen had in the previous breath declared that personal attacks had to end.

We understand it well enough, but reject it as the ranting of fools, for to claim that poverty creates crime in a country that spends far more than it can afford on welfare, and at the same time, has a standard of living that far exceeds that of so many other countries that are way below it on the crime statistic tables, betrays a major inability to relate to reality. What do you think NZ has one of the highest rates of rape for, because the rapists feel “alienated”?? Does their lack of money or possessions provide them with a moral barrier against rape?

For fuck’s sake. I’ll tell you another part of the reason we have one of the worlds highest crime rates and its because blind irrational lamers like you are running around preaching the doctrine of collective responsibility when you should be demanding that individuals carry that burden for themselves and themselves alone.

Navel gazing self obsessed socialists white anting our society by telling psychopaths that its OK to rape and murder because they’re “alienated”. What a sick joke. You’re no part of the solution Dishonest Johnny, to the contrary- you’re in actuality a real big part of the problem.

I’ll tell you another part of the reason we have one of the worlds highest crime rates and its because we have one of the world’s highest incarceration rates and we have dipshits like you, Garrett and co screaming to lock up MORE people. What is it with the Hard Right and their love of ambulances at cliff bottoms?

You’re no part of the solution Redbaiter, to the contrary- you’re in actuality a real big cause of the problem.

National actually thought they should avoid such obvious contradiction of their previous behaviour when they lost office. Labour however have proven very adept at the switch to opposition, not letting such trivia get in the way of the political lines.

The messengers should be shot. They’re partisan political agents posing as neutral observers (journalists and reporters). I don’t blame them entirely. I blame the NZ public who suck up their propaganda in huge gulps and do not apparently have the modicum of intelligence needed to discriminate between real news and politically motivated propaganda.

Neither Garret or Hide have done in this case anything they need to apologise for and Garret’s resignation was an act of spineless capitulation.

ACT deserve to go under. Apart from their failure to provide a clear and coherent political platform, they’ve continually shied away from confronting the real enemy in NZ, and that is the left wing mainstream media. They have always been out to get Garret and eventually, ACT in its entirety. Anyone who does not know that must have just time warped in from another galaxy.

That would be Helen who didn’t know about Owen Glenn’s donation to Winston First till just after the 6 month period of culpability had expired…. Yep she was one to talk about integrity alright. Don’t get me started on Darnton VS Clark…..

It’s a good question, isn’t it. Precisely what was Phil’s calculation?

Where was, in his mind, the upside?

Of course one can understand how desperate is Phil to imprint his image upon the loyal psyche but FFS, to say that he thinks the Coalition requires dissolution is not the best thing to do to achieve that and even I know that, and it’s not my job to think about things like that.

Given the almost Stalinistic imprint Hulun was able to achieve upon those very same “loyal” supporters however and the urgent need to replace such with his own, I can well understand why Phil is almost insanely driven to do this, but place and time, Phil. Place and time.

It would take a lot more guts to address the complex causes and deal with them.

Well I’ll address a couple Petey, and really it doesn’t take that much guts, just more guts than you and your apologist ilk have.

1. Stop letting useless, good for nothing islanders in to the country! Not all islanders are useless, in fact I have a great many hard working islander friends. However, there is a proportion of islanders coming into this country solely to breed and collect welfare payments, with no intention of ever making a productive commitment to society. This of course breeds crime, perpetrated by their indolent youth. In fact, we don’t even have to stop them coming, we just put them on the first banana boat home, with no right to ever return, as soon as they commit a crime.

2. Maori have to stand up and own their problems. Until the sweep-it-under-the-carpet maori elders admit that a lot of their young have problems and these problems need to be addressed in a familial way, maori’s will carry on killing their kids etc.

Dopeyjack;Three strikes isn’t going to lock up more criminals its just going to lock up those that won’t reform their antisocial behavoir for longer. Where is the problem with that, unless of course you are one of them?

I actually have been arguing for 20 years and asking the question, why are we locking up so many men. I think I have some idea about the answer. Do you?

JK feels RH has shown good judgement dealing with Garrett!! Hmmmm………..He’d be in an extremely small minority thinking that.

I presumed JK meant good judgment with Hide’s last dealing with Garrett, telling him where the plank was.
Prior to that, I agree there is a small minority who would think he has judged and acted well on this.

I’ll tell you another part of the reason we have one of the worlds highest crime rates and its because we have one of the world’s highest incarceration rates and we have dipshits like you, Garrett and co screaming to lock up MORE people. What is it with the Hard Right and their love of ambulances at cliff bottoms?

That’s crap, and you know it, Legion.
The reason crime has sky-rocketed is because we have totally removed any semblace of a fence at the cliff top. All that is left is the ambulance at the bottom. And until personal integrity and accountability are restored, all we have left is to lock up the amoral scum criminals – not that I blame them primarily; they’re just the natural end result when you systematically remove right, wrong, and the requirement of instilling values, etc into children prior to them moving into adulthood.

And we can blame ALL of the above on the Progressive Leftards who have so corrupted the system over the last 30+ years. By their removal of parental rights to raise children as parents see fit; by their filling the education system with progressive clones who push the party line, etc. And we wonder why our kids turn out as they do, and become violent criminals with no conscience.

What is all this crap about ACT being hard right? In some ways it is further left than any party. ACT is is the only party that cares about the elderly and genuinely sick freezing in the winter because of some stupid tax.

Phil exhibits the symptoms of a drowning man,clutching at straws. Is he under pressure to pronounce on everything and in so doing makes a fool of himself.?

3 strikes is better than what we had ie piss weak sentencing by a white middle class guilt ridden judiciary.We wouldn’t have needed it if judges hit the bastards hard the first time round. Look at the rubbish sentence given to the lowlife who killed the prison guard.How many lives has he wrecked before this? FFS how can our judges still be such limp dicks?

Pete George ….what minority? You are a plonker,many times the NZ public has shown it’s sick of crime …..remember the referendum?

……TVNZ News pushing the police are killers mantra,with Atik Hussain as the case against the police……..remember ,if you break the law it’s cos of plod…..FFS

Sad isn’t it that this thread is about a person who IMO is relatively blameless in this, who has lost his reputation, his livelihood and is currently, apparently almost universally despised, through no fault of his own.

A man who said what needed to be said, in the context of the time with known facts at the time, every time.

Which one of us would have omitted to mention to the judge if we were under trial for the passport thing, the Tongan issue – given we KNEW not thought, it was bullshit, were we David Garrett who was by that time, very stable, sensible and well-established for a very long time since being a foolish young man a long long time ago in a faraway place and time.

I’m not trying to trivialise, but I do imagine anyone one of us being in exactly the position he was, what else would WE have done: i.e. if you allege you would have done any different, I’m calling you out as a 20/20 fantasist idealist liar.

Fact is, if you look at it like that, Garrett didn’t put a foot wrong, yet he’s the bad guy.

I sense the MSM is hot on the “trail.” FFS, you’d think just sometimes they’d get it right.

The reason crime has sky-rocketed is because we have totally removed any semblace of a fence at the cliff top. All that is left is the ambulance at the bottom. And until personal integrity and accountability are restored, all we have left is to lock up the amoral scum criminals – not that I blame them primarily; they’re just the natural end result when you systematically remove right, wrong, and the requirement of instilling values, etc into children prior to them moving into adulthood.

And we can blame ALL of the above on the Progressive Leftards who have so corrupted the system over the last 30+ years. By their removal of parental rights to raise children as parents see fit; by their filling the education system with progressive clones who push the party line, etc. And we wonder why our kids turn out as they do, and become violent criminals with no conscience.

So bleats the resident xian appologist.

So why are there many times MORE christians in jail than atheists?

Why is that areas with LESS religous belief also have LESS crime?

Maybe because as atheists, humanists, rationalists, we KNOW that this is all we get and so we must make the most of life, unlike the christians who expect forgiveness and another life.

Maybe it’s just me, but what is so terrible about what Garrett has done ? He’s been hounded from parliament by the media, hells bells, 2/3 rds of the front page of the Dom was “Garrett Lies to Judge” and other inflammatory headlines. In 1984 he faked a passport application, and in 2005 was discharged without conviction. I know of at least one other person who did the same and to my knowledge has never been nicked for it, and I myself checked it out pretty carefully as an idea but decided it wasn’t worth the risk. I don’t see it as anything more than a moment of foolishness.

He’s a hypocrite, yes, he’s a politician, it means the same thing. I don’t think really any worse of him, but then I never thought much of him anyway. To my mind he is/was a good deal less of a hypocrite and far less “corrupt” morally than Helen Clark. The antics labour got up to as others have mentioned, doesn’t seem to me that labour in particular have any safe ground to stand while criticizing garrett.

Apparently this guy had the same stupid motive that is to do it to see if it could be done. Rightly or wrongly Garrett got name suppression. He may have been better off if he got the fine.

If one wants to talk about hypocrites look at the MSM. I think even that would agree that it is highly unlikely that Garrett would reoffend.

Now we have a doctor who downloaded kiddy porn who gets name suppression. What is the likelihood of him re-offending? I think it would be a lot grater than Garrett? What does John Armstrong of the Herald have to say about this – nothing? Can we conclude that Armstrong by his silence does not think downloading kiddy porn is not a serious matter?

What did Armstrong have to say about Clark’s forgery? If Clark had not got rid of Doone by lying to the media she may have been in a lot more trouble for her crime. Did she show any remorse like Garrett – no? She went into damage control and arraigned for the evidence to be destroyed.

I made a $1000 offer for the painting. The man that bought the forged painting ended up selling if to a scum bag lawyer for 5k by the name of Simon Mitchell and he burned the painting. That is called destroying evidence. I complained to the law society to no avail..

Where was John Armstrong then?

I would like to know which was Armstrong has voted in the last 4 or 5 elections. I bet it was not National let alone ACT.

Oh dear what a terrible post, to summarise “Never mind what my party’s allies did this week, look over there!”

Why so angry David, realising that the Nats need ACT or is it that questions are starting to be asked about John Key, ie what did he know about Garrett and when did he know it. I assume SIS would have been aware of Garrett’s conviction and would have brought it to the PM’s attention. Also ACT and National have a “no surprises” policy which should have led to Hyde mentioning this whole affair to Key.

So again, what did Key know and when did he know it?

(oh and take a chill pill David, swearing is not big and it’s not clever)

If you want to find out where the leaks have come from which have all but destroyed ACT, then you need look no further than the National Party. I think that they are behind all this. ACT has been a threat to the Nats ever since the formation of this government and the National Socialists have moved against them and stuck the knife in.

The Smile & Wave Party doesn’t need ACT. With United Future and the Racist Party they have 64 seats and can govern without ACT, and so that’s what they are now doing…. removing what they see as their biggest threat.

If you jump into bed with scorpions, don’t be surprised if they sting you in the arse. I am nonplussed that nobody has realised what’s going on before this. Its so bloody obvious.

I met David Garrett 7 years ago at a symposium and in fact we ended up sharing a cottage at the resort where it was held. He was a fascinating individual with a great intellect and some useful ideas on law and order matters. A number of character flaws became immediately apparent and left me with a sense of unease and I felt that he was a man with whom one needed to be very cautious about being closely associated with because it was only a matter of time before his lifestyle choices caught up with him. I was frankly surprised when he was given such a high ranking on the ACT list and felt that the pressures of Parliamentary life would open up the cracks that he had clearly papered over in his quest for political office. None of the revelations that have led to his demise surprise me.

The bigger issue is Rodney Hide because he is the party leader. Small parties rise and fall on the personality and capabilities of the leader. I too met Hide at the same symposium although a different year. When drunk he got into a massive nasty verbal fight with several prominent people in attendence so his pugnacious sense of self rightness was very evident. His personality flaws have led to the precarious position the party finds itself in and manifest themselves in 3 very important issues:
1 – The double standard over the perk busting. Only overarching hubris allows one to believe that in the small incestuous world that is the Wellington ‘beltway’, his own taking of perks would not become public. Having used perks as an issue to drive his and his party’s image, he was so easily hoist by his own petard.
2 – His prickly management style alientated the Douglas faction. Now Douglas is not the easiest person to manage but I cannot imagine he and his followers getting to the point where their faction leader (Roy) would be getting close to mounting a coup if Clark or Key were Douglas’ party leader.
3 – His failure to persuade Garrett to go public on both issues (the disputed Tongan assault charge and his “Day of the Jackal” impersonation) could well be the death knell of either his leadership or ACT as a force in Parliament. This is political management 101 for crying out loud. Hide and Garrett could’ve easily found an innocuous quiet moment early in Garrett’s parliamentary tenure and long before the campaign for 3 Strikes to reveal these two issues. The reputation of Garrett’s complainant in Tonga is so coloured than almost all would excuse it as a drunken fracar with equal blame. The discharge without conviction on the passport charge could’ve been highlighted and Garrett could’ve been made to seem altruistic by going well beyond the name supression by publicising the incident. The ‘foolish youthful prank’ meme would have been much more easily spun and accepted. For these issues to be dragged out in such an ugly fashion after Garrett’s high profile law and order campaign just added to the growing meme of ACT Party hypocricy.

The sad thing is that all MPs are flawed and many carry baggage that could do mortal damage to their careers. The 3 Strikes law was a major achievement for Garrett and ACT. I cannot escape the feeling of personal discomfort I felt at being exposed to the raw side of Garrett’s colourful personal life and the sense that he was a political accident waiting to happen. A good party leader either recognises such people and never nurtures their rise to power or finds ways to neuralise early the known threats. That Hide did neither could likely destroy this party that IMHO plays an important and vital role in NZ political life.

“I assume SIS would have been aware of Garrett’s conviction and would have brought it to the PM’s attention.”

Which conviction is that? The one that is under appeal in Tonga and which attracted a fine of $10? The SIS got their knickers in a twist over that? Or do you mean the passport thing in which case what is it about the term “discharge without conviction” that floats above the comprehension of one or other of us? This tit for tat simply serves to establish one thing only — the level of moral corruption and hypocrisy that runs rife in the corridors of power is bi-partisan and sickening. It is so deeply entrenched in the pysche of the political powerbases that unless there can be some enforced accountability it will only get worse.

As is often the case, Pete, you won’t debate – you merely slither around the question when it gets difficult. There is demonstrably strong public support for stronger criminal sentences and (I suspect) for the “three strikes” law. You’re the one who claims otherwise, but when called on it you start declaiming elegantly about something other than your allegation of minority public support for stronger sentences / three strikes.